The Freelancer or the business which one was the chicken or egg? Are freelancers driving the revolution or is it the invisible hand of the businesses?
Journalists love a trope. Many are still rolled out even after being proven to be somewhat outdated. Take travel as an example. In a recession, it’s still quoted that people will try to save money and holiday in the UK rather than go abroad.
This was correct many moons ago but now the world has changed and the UK is expensive. Travelling and accommodation abroad are much cheaper...but the old trope continues to be rolled out.
And do we now have another one, this time in the Freelance Market? Reading many articles you are given the distinct impression that the freelance market is growing as people are looking for, and demanding, more flexibility in their work/life balance, especially after Covid. Businesses are having to offer flexibility in the workplace or they will risk losing staff. The driving force in the market is shown to be the employees .....but is this actually correct?
Firstly let’s properly segregate two crucial things here...remote working (people working away from the office but in a permanent job for one employer) and actual freelancers, not tied to any one employer. There are some obvious differences between the two groups of workers.
Firstly, the freelancers. Statista state that by 2027, 50% of the labour force will be a freelancer in some capacity. I am sure someone will say...hang on...not in my business...so let’s just clarify this figure. This is an average, some sectors will have a lot less and some a lot more.
Whilst it feels that the Freelancer is always written as the driving force of change, might I suggest that it is perhaps the businesses that have been the main drivers of growth in the freelance market, from both a strategic & cost perspective?
In this regard, many businesses were forced to use freelancers. It was not because employees wanted flexibility but because most sectors needed a much larger spread of skillsets.
Let’s take a small manufacturer of tableware. Years ago, they manufactured their products and sent them to a distributor or directly to retailers. They would create a lovely glossy brochure to inform new customers or existing partners of their new lines and they may put a few adverts in House & Garden… If customers wanted to talk to them, they would call them on an old-fashioned system called the telephone...and a landline at that!
But then, suddenly, they found they needed a website, which needed to be designed, managed, edited, have online payment systems, malware protection, GDPR, credit card security, SEO optimisation, and many other things besides.
They also needed to sell their tableware on the main marketplaces (Amazon, Etsy etc) which was another strategy. They were also expected to deliver customer service electronically and even have a shiny new customer chatbot.
And then there’s the need to be on Social Media....managing marketing, brand awareness and customers in real-time.
So the reality was that they quickly required staff that had many more skill sets, but many of those businesses were too small to need, or frankly afford, to employ people with these skills permanently.
So what did those companies do in the early days?
Well, in most cases someone in the company knew a friend who was a developer and persuaded them to help build a website in their spare time and weekends.
Let’s call that person Jenny. Jenny then found that a few companies wanted the same thing and she started to make a nice living on the side of her day job.
Enter the phrase side hustle. Eventually, Jenny found that she could now leave her ‘day’ job and she could work from home and step away from all those corporate shenanigans.
The journey of our tableware company was replicated by thousands of companies all needing these new skill sets on a part-time basis and the experience of Jenny was also replicated with many more skilled workers entering the freelance market.
So, businesses drove the market and still do.
The freelance market has matured and businesses are now looking at the freelance sector as a potential cost-cutting opportunity (employing freelancers in emerging economies) but also to help them drive their digital transformation strategies quicker and potentially better than doing so using internal employees.
In this regard, let’s use an art analogy....would you rather have Dave (who’s quite a good designer full-time...or Banksy for 30 minutes!
FINALLY, let’s look at who is driving the ‘remote’ element of working.
These are people that work for one employer but are told wish/demand more flexibility. Let’s look at this from the business perspective first. The average cost of funding one person desk in London is circa $10,800 per annum ($900 per month).
In an office of 1,000 people, if everyone has 25 days of holiday, that means circa 100 people are always on holiday & so 10% of desks will never be used!
That equates to over $1m for empty desks per annum!
So companies started to use desk sharing to cut this wasted expenditure & offer people flexibility so they can cut costs and have less ‘desk wastage’.
Oh...and companies can also pay lower salaries as people have fewer travelling expenses as well as the company have having lower heating/lighting costs.
If we go back to the chicken and egg again, perhaps the demand for remote working isn’t being driven as much as we would think by the employee after all.
